First Blog

While reading Yuri Lotman's Semiotics of Cinema I found one topic extremely relevant to my observation of media. Lately I have been re-watching many of the older movies from my childhood. Arthur Berger writes about how age, intelligence, past experience, and many other factors effect an individuals comprehension of media. Arthur suggests that films, and media in general, have many layers that depending on the viewers age, intelligence, etc are "skimmed off." For example, as a child I watched the movie "Hook" which is a rendition of peter pan. When I was younger I watched the movie for its humor, creativity that helped my imagination to fly, and for its familiarity. When I recently watched it I noticed a underlying concept of fear of death. The dichotomy between being a child and being an adult in this film is obvious. The entire plot of the movie is based in a magical land where time stands still. As a child, however, I wasn’t grasping the logic behind the antagonists anger or why he feared a ticking crocodile so much, I just found it hilarious when a pirate broke down into tears at the sight of a clock.

In many of these older films I noticed concepts and images that I did not understand and, ergo, notice. I find it interesting how many of these movies for children throw in suggestive themes and innuendoes so often. At the age of six one could not possible notice or understand such things. The animators and writing understand this "skimming of" concept. They could be doing it to illustrate this idea. That or its simply a way of making the movie more enjoyable for the parents that must watch it with their child.